Good Morning - September 6, 2005

Good Morning! 

 

Hope everyone had a good Labor Day weekend. 

 

Don't forget that you can find all of the back issues of the daily email on the web at www.leapclass.blogspot.com.  

 

The new unit for this week is Unit  19 Justifying Grace  

 

Focus Scripture for the Week:   Titus 2:11  

 

 For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all. 

 

Today's Scriptures:    Romans 5:1-11; Romans 5:12-22     

 

Today's Discussion:   

 

-- scripture for today is both yesterday's and today's readings, to get us caught up.

 

-- I've come to really appreciate the Reflections section of our study so much, since the author does a very good job of making things simple and straightforward.  Justification can be a difficult concept, and I think we will see as much in both the scripture and Wesley's writings.

 

-- let's start this week at the end, and work our way through it.  The main things to remember --

 

-- we could never earn our salvation -- the gulf between us and God is too great.

 

-- our salvation is a gift from God, freely available -- he is the one that justifies us.

 

-- the way we should live our lives -- in obedience and discipleship, should be done as a reaction to what God has done for us, not as an effort to earn our salvation.

 

-- one way to look at this is that to think of the proverbial "Pearly Gates" moment that we all talk about in jokes and stories.  A lot of those stories and jokes build on the idea that the gatekeeper -- St. Peter usually -- looks you up in the book, makes note of everything you've done, and makes a decision about whether to let you come in or not based on what you've done.  And there is a lot of fun and laughter in a lot of those stories.  But we all need to know that that isn't the truth.  There is nothing that could be written down about what we've done to get us past St. Peter.  The only way in is our acceptance of God has done for us, providing Jesus.  Our salvation is not based on an essay question - What did we do?.  Is based on a single True/False question -- did we believe?   And additionally, we don't get graded A, B, C -- it only Pass/Fail. 

 

Question for Sunday:   

 

-- what's the best Pearly Gates story you know?

 

Today's prayer request:   The storm victims of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.   

 

This will be with us for a while, and real dimensions of the tragedy are still yet to be known -- the dead, the damage, the length of time before an entire city begins anew.  And we need to remember those who have gone to help out, keep security, and to do rescue and recovery, because it is going to be difficult for them as well.  I haven't heard if Joey Harbarger is back yet or not, and Valerie's brother Ron Bowen (a Birmingham policeman) left yesterday for Harahan(?) outside of New Orleans to do security.

 

Today's class member prayer: 

 

Brad Douglas 

 

Have a great day.

 

Jay